It's propaganda. Repeat mantras/slogans that insist all is wonderful to prevent concerns about leadership. It's gaslighting. You are in a 'spiritual paradise', if you have a problem, the problem is you.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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What has the Spiritual Paradise of the WTS been over time
by blondie inthe first mention i find in the wts publications is 1958. although the wts says the index goes from 1930 to 1985, nothing appears before 1958 a search only found by using the phrase "spiritual paradise" not in the index.
in 2015 there was a clarification of the phrase "of course, we should not conclude that the terms “spiritual paradise” and “spiritual temple” are the same.
the spiritual temple is god’s arrangement for true worship.".
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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peacefulpete
...both sides in the fourth century debate took Wisdom/Word/Son to be a person at the beginning with God, the difference is Arians maintained the distinction that the Son was created and subordinate to God...
Bingo again. The Arians 'literalized' word pictures. They made too much of the expressions "son' and 'beginning' having been hundreds of years distanced from the esoteric language. When Wisdom was 'created as the beginning of God's works' the writers did not literally believe there was a woman in heaven that was created to perform for God. It/she was a hypostasis of God's power. JWs are similarly literalizing the words and making much noise about their uninitiated take on these passages.
I'll remind you that it's my position that the Catholic fathers had themselves mistaken metaphor for history, in large part because of the success of the Gospel stories that euhemerized and embellished the Logos concept into a Roman crucifixion setting. The Arians simply took it a small step further by reducing the Logos to a demigod because of focusing on descriptions such as 'created' and 'son'.
The EL/Yahweh and Yahweh/Michael parallels contributed to the 2 powers concept from a different angle.
The main point is that Schafer and others have demonstrated that there were indeed pre-Christian and early Christain concepts of God that eventually congealed into the Trinity doctrine formulation. The belief that the Christ was a manifestation of God was not secondary to Christianity it was a fundamental underpinning that literalizers complicated/ denied.
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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peacefulpete
Another thing that should be taken into consideration when looking at texts such as Rev 3.14; Col 1.15, John 1:1 and so on is that these passages are clearly drawing on the Jewish Wisdom tradition. In that tradition Wisdom was spoken about as God’s first creation, an archangel, or principal angel beside God. Therefore it’s entirely within the cultural context of the period to understand these passages in the NT along those lines.
Bingo. But somehow you have literalized these passages just as the 4th Arian 'heretics' did.
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Do we have "original" indipendent documents proving that Rutherford was an alcoholic?
by psyco ini was wondering if you could prove with "original" independent documents that rutherford was an alcoholic.... .
i read penton, but since he is a former jw he could not be considered an independent source.... .
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peacefulpete
vienne....72,73 according to wiki
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Marking has it's merits IMO
by enoughisenough init would appear the context about marking has to do with those who are not working to feed themselves, but meddling in others business.
a couple more scrptures to think about.
jesus said not to throw your pearls before swine.
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peacefulpete
Just adding that some "serious wrongs" are just opinions. That's why I used the expression 'harmful' rather than wrong. 'Wrong' is a word like 'sin' that can be a blanket term that really only has specific religious meaning. To a Catholic, it is a 'serious wrong' for a bishop to appoint woman priest. But to others it might be progress.
That said, it is a citizen's responsibility to protect the vulnerable. "See something, say something", doesn't just mean terrorists.
Drop the whole loaded 'marking' lingo. Its cult-speak.
BTW.... 2Tim was not written by Paul, and the reference to Jannes and Jambres (3:8,9) are characters from Jewish Midrash on the Moses story. It is one of a number of examples of writers referencing noncanonical works as "scripture" (vs 16).
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Marking has it's merits IMO
by enoughisenough init would appear the context about marking has to do with those who are not working to feed themselves, but meddling in others business.
a couple more scrptures to think about.
jesus said not to throw your pearls before swine.
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peacefulpete
Choosing not to be close with toxic or harmful people is very different from a church labeling individuals with different opinions as persona non grata. It's a cult spin on normal behavior.
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Who told the first lie?
by nicolaou inthis is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?
god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.
in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.
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peacefulpete
One, YOM, means a literal day, such as when the sun goes up and then the sun sets. But BEYOM refers to a period of the time...
I was debating whether to discuss that angle, decided not, but glad you did. The point that the authors had individual traditions and emphasis, along with your pointing out that the words YOM and BEYOM are not equal, should end this conversation.
When a Christian writer utilized a story, like the Adam and Eve or Noah stories, he almost certainly did so in the same spirit as the original author, a theological/moral tale.
While not an exact parallel, the Grimms Fairy tales preserved an ancient German moral code of sorts. Characters dramatizing values and traditions. Do some children mistake the stories as real? Sure, but as adults we can appreciate them for what they are.
As an aside, it's my view that the Gospel stories are a continuation of the Jewish/Greek affinity for moral tales and can be appreciated as such.
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Who told the first lie?
by nicolaou inthis is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?
god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.
in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.
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peacefulpete
did you skip the first two chapters of genesis?
notice how the word "day" is used...If you really take notice, you might see what other readers have since antiquity.
2:4b Starts a second version (J) of the creation story. This one does not use the Sabbath (7 day) week motif but rather simply says God created/ordered the earth and heavens in a day.
The differences do not end there. In the second story, the first living thing God makes is man, then the garden of Eden and plants (no such garden in first version(P)) and then animals which are offered to the man as a partner, but none are found suitable, so then God makes a woman. This is obviously very different from the P version. The P stands for 'Priestly', as this author, unlike J, has a focus on worship (including Sabbath) and Temple functions throughout the Torah.
My point is that the authors had very different schema. One says 7 days one says 1.
Their stories having been collected and laid side by side emphasizes that the compiler recognized their distinctiveness. Do you?
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Do we have "original" indipendent documents proving that Rutherford was an alcoholic?
by psyco ini was wondering if you could prove with "original" independent documents that rutherford was an alcoholic.... .
i read penton, but since he is a former jw he could not be considered an independent source.... .
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peacefulpete
He abused people, whether he abused his own body is of less concern.
However, relatives and associates described him as fond of women and booze. The Canada branch director, Salter, wrote an open letter to Rutherford in which he detailed having sourced cases of liquor during prohibition. Moyles' open letter of resignation from Bethel asserted Rutherford was responsible for the 'glorification of alcohol" there. Penton interviewed former Bethelites who reported having to assist Rutherford after overdrinking.
Short of police records or a transcription of medical records, not much can be expected as proof of alcoholism.
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Hey, Regarding the "Resurrection" thing and the WT denial of the Mt 27:51-53 incident...
by FragrantAddendum inso according to bible.
elisha's bones were there when jehovah resurrected some other dude.
jesus could heal from a distance by power of god.
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peacefulpete
The passage did not say the saints were resurrected after Jesus was. Some translators have made it appear so. Some going so far as to use the name. The passage simply said the saints left the graveyard after they were resurrected (raised up).
Theological questions remain: Did all Christians object to the idea of resurrections prior to Jesus? Obviously not, as Jesus himself is credited with a few (unless they were understood as metaphor). Famously the Lukan addition at (7:11-17) story of the son of a widow is clear intertextual 'doublet' of 1 Kings 17 (LXX).
Perhaps the author wanted to make explicit a message of 'new life', possibly in a way similar the 2nd Temple scribes responsible for the Elijah/Elisha raisings. Life after death, perhaps played on the theme of national hope/restoration for the 2nd Temple Jew and baptism/rebirth for the Christian. Again, we have metaphor and word plays cleverly woven into a narrative.
In my mind a theological distinction seems evident between individual raisings from the dead and a mass resurrection as reward for saints as implied by Matt 27. Luke's reuse of 1 Kings but omission of Matt 27:51b-53 suggests he did also.
Regarding John 3:13. This old thread still addresses the question of what the writer may have been intending.
Interestingly, there has not been a consistent view of the Elijah/Elisha cycle stories. As you probably know some Rabbis understood the stories to be 'near death' healings rather than resurrections. Did some early Christians also??
So exactly how the author of the Paulinist Colossians 1 would have interpreted the Elijah story is uncertain. Regardless, "firstborn from dead" clearly had an honorific and/or cultic meaning other than simply being the first to have come back to life.